President Donald Trump said this weekend that critics of his tariffs are controlled by China or other countries, taking special aim at the Wall Street Journal after an editorial called his tariffs “the dumbest trade war in history.”
The Wall Street Journal published a scathing editorial over the weekend after Trump hit America’s neighbors with a 25% tariffs on Saturday after decades of duty-free trade between the three countries. Trump also added an additional 10% tariff on imports from China.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the stated goals of Trump’s tariffs – to end fentanyl trafficking – was impossible.
“Mr. Trump’s justification for this economic assault on the neighbors makes no sense … drugs have flowed into the U.S. for decades, and will continue to do so as long as Americans keep using them. Neither country can stop it,” the editorial board wrote.
But it didn’t stop there.
“None of this is supposed to happen under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated and signed in his first term,” the board wrote. “The U.S. willingness to ignore its treaty obligations, even with friends, won’t make other countries eager to do deals. Maybe Mr. Trump will claim victory and pull back if he wins some token concessions. But if a North American trade war persists, it will qualify as one of the dumbest in history.”
Trump wasn’t having it.
“Anybody that’s against Tariffs, including the Fake News Wall Street Journal, and Hedge Funds, is only against them because these people or entities are controlled by China, or other foreign or domestic companies,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “Anybody that loves and believes in the United States of America is in favor of Tariffs. They should have never ended, in favor of the Income Tax System, in 1913. The response to Tariffs has been FANTASTIC!”
Wall Street Journal Dow Jones & Co. is a subsidiary of News Corp., a media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch.
Stocks slid Monday morning in early trading. All three major stock exchanges in the U.S. were lower on the first official trading day since the tariffs were put in place.
